Peace, one and all…

This is my first post here, so please forgive any inadvertant mistakes.  I've also posted this at my own blog (Abdur Rahman's Corner), as well as at a few other places (The Mureeds, Eteraz) as I feel it's an important topic that needs to be widely explored.  It also feels like an appropriate way to begin my time here.

May God accept this as a sincere effort on my part and may He make it of benefit. 

Omar G has an interesting piece on the step that ISNA's Louay Safi just can't take regarding the ongoing debate about Ingrid Mattson's election to the leadership of that organization. The comments raise some important questions about the place of hadith among North American Muslims today.

Scott Lucas even suggests that Fatima Mernissi's approach to the hadith which has the Prophet declare that a people will not prosper if they have a woman as leader risks throwing out the Sahihayn (i.e. the hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim) altogether. In a rather polemical vein, he muses that Muslims have lost so much to modernity, including the Sufi orders and the Sharia; are they also to lose the two hadith collections which are regarded (by Sunnis) as the most reliable?